15,000 orpahns suffering harsh life in Gaza

Child labor has risen sharply in the besieged Gaza, where youngsters toiling in garages and on construction sites have become breadwinners for families feeling the brunt of the Palestinian enclave's 43% unemployment rate.

The growing child labor comes amid a sharp increase in the number of Gaza orphans who lost their parents during the 2014 Israeli genocidal war on the besieged enclave. Currently over 15,000 orphans live in Gaza, addoring to al-Resala daily.

In the past five years, the number of working children between the ages of 10 and 17 has doubled to 9,700 in the territory, according to the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics.

The bureau said 2,900 of those children are below the legal employment age of 15. Economists in the narrow coastal strip, home to 1.9 million Palestinians, estimate the real number of underage workers could be twice as high.
The increase in Gaza goes against trends.

The International Labor Organization says the worldwide number of children in labor has fallen by a third since 2000, from 246 million to 168 million, with more than a fifth in sub-Saharan Africa.